I really hope I don't end up in New Jersey.

My name is Katie West and one week from tomorrow, I'll be on a plane flying east toward Spain.

Spending four months studying in Salamanca is probably going to be the most terrifying thing I've ever done. First of all, I've never flown on my own before, and there's a pretty good chance I'm going to screw this up before I even leave the Chattanooga airport. Or the Charlotte airport. Or the Philadelphia airport. Or the Madrid airport. See how many opportunities there will be for me to go through the wrong gate and end up flying to Chile or Botswana or New Jersey? I really hope I don't end up in New Jersey.

And secondly...four months is a long, long time when you're 20, and Europe may as well be Mars when your family and your best friends are scattered around Tennessee and South Carolina. Taking a timeout from my American life will be heartbreaking. There will be so much going on with everyone back home, and I won't be able to be a part of it. It's going to be incredibly isolating, not knowing a single person in the whole country - at least in the beginning. In an embarrassingly first-world, 21st-century way, I think I know what the pioneers felt like.

On the other hand, I need to stop being a drama queen before someone slaps me. I really do appreciate just how lucky I am to be able to study abroad. I love traveling more than just about anything else, except maybe coffee and hiking and the Avett Brothers and snuggling. And cat videos. And dessert. (Do I sound like a girl, or what?) If I spend even one afternoon this spring pouting in my room, it'll be a afternoon wasted, which would be a shame.

"Carpe diem," a good friend wrote on my arm in ballpoint pen during AP English three years ago. Seize the day. I've got big plans for this semester, and I'm not going to let myself down.

And just like Mumford and Sons, "I'm a hopeless wanderer, and I will learn, I will learn to love these skies I'm under." Get at me, Salamanca, and watch this Mumford and Sons performance at 2011's Glastonbury Festival because it's excellent.